Talk:West Liberty Cemetery, Ohio County, West Virginia, USA
form Some things to think about: :You may want to consider a formal HTML setup for a cemetery transcription page For example Name West Liberty Cemetery Location Map Location Ohio County, West Virginia, USA Transcriber XXXXX Transcription Date XXXXXX Notes Town Sign - First organized town in the Ohio Valley. Formed in 1787. First court of Ohio County met at Black's Cabin here in 1777. Nearby is grave of Captain Samuel Brady, hero of the Pennsylvania and Virginia frontiers. General Views of Cemetery: (first photograph) (second photograph) (third photograph) Number Person DOB DOD Inscription Notes Grave 1 Captain Samuel Brady, - - (Indian fighter), served in 3rd & 8th PA regiment, fought in the battles of Boston, Princeton, Brandywine & Monmouth, Revolutionary War, commanded scouts for General "Mad Anthony" Wayne 1792, Husband of Drusilla Swearingen, 1756 - 1795 Cenotaph???. sources give death date as 1796 rather than 1795 Grave 2 Captain Samuel Brady, Died Jan. 1?, 1796 Aged ?7 years, our grandfather Grave 3 John Brady Jan. 12, 1872 son of Capt. Samuel Brady, sweetly fell asleep in Jesus, Aged 82 years, our father Grave 4 Robert McFarland Died Aug. 11, 1858 Grave 5 Jane McFarland Died Oct. 19, 1866 Aged 72 years Grave 6 James McFarland Died Aug. 28, 18? This makes it a bit easier to extract information, and forces the transcriber to be a bit more careful about inserting speulative information into a cemetery transcription. Whether or not you use the above format, or one of your own debvising, or none at all, keep in mind that cemetery transcription data is a valuable resource. It gains that vaue since its a primary record placed on the gravestone by contemporaries of the deceased. They presumably knew what the data was. But its status as a primary record is lost when "other information" is added to "make it more complete". The other information maybe helpful to be sure for other researchers, but it comes from someone not contemporary with the deceased---and so its value is different than the data originally placed on the stone. Hence, its important to make sure that original data is preserved and distinguished from later information. its also important to distinguish a stone that is an original gravemarker, and one that is a cenotaph, placed there years later as a commemorative stone. or perhaps a replacement stone. Sometimes people mistake cenotaphs for original gravestones, or otherwise don't make the distinction, and draw erroneous conclusions because of it. A gravestone is a contempory record of the deceased. A cenotaph is what someone, perhaps many years later, thought. Not the same value at all. Bill 14:46, 23 March 2007 (UTC) ---- ::Bill, or whoever (wasn't this started by an anonymous user?) - ::With all due respect, I think this is a terrible idea. The reason for this is that I have found people try to make the information on the headstone fit the form, rather than change the form to fit the information. Most people colour in between the lines. If "died" is spelled out on the stone, they will abbreviate it "d." - if "April" is written on the stone, they abbreviate it "Apr" or "04" in order to fit it into the small square on the form - and since there is no box for epitaphs, they skip "beloved mother" which removes perhaps the only information from 1785 that we will ever have that she actually gave birth to anyone. ::With advances in search engines, we should be able to enter text in any form and the technology will find what we are looking for wherever it is - in a title, in a URL or even inside of a file itself. ::I can get really fired up about this subject, and should therefore probably not participate in a discussion about it. But wherever this discussion is had, it should probably be moved someplace other than this talk page. ::Respectfully, Zephyrinus 18:42, 23 March 2007 (UTC) ---- Zephyr As far as I know, I'm the only other person whose put a discussion line on this page, and I defintely signed my first comment. Its OK if you don't like the layout but I did say, this was something to think about, not that it had to be done. How you choose to set this up is pretty much up to you. And if others don't like the approach you take, or I here suggested, they're going to set their pages up however they want anyway. Setting up cemetery transcription pages is something I've considered doing myself, and if I create such a page, I'll probably go the table route. But of course, you can lay your's out just about however you please. But I don't think your reasons are on the mark. While your comment about the amount of space might be accurate for a standard physical page table, its not accurate for a simple HTML table. The space provided in these tables expands to fill whatever is placed there. If the stone says "died" that will fit. If its "deceased" that will fit. Space is not a limiting factor in setting up tables like this. As far as what cells are needed, in the example, I put epitaph type material in the last box over. You could just as easily label that column "epitaph", though few gravestones include them. Or you could add a new column. I might also observe that you have two "graves" for the same person---Samuel Brady. I'm assuming one of those is a cenotaph, but you didn't describe it that way. You might want to think about exactly what information it is you want to include in this, and how you intend to describe various categories of stones. It does make a difference in how the material is interpreted. In anycase, you do need to think through the kind of information that needs to be included in each article, and the way the information is to be displayed. There are some obvious data components for a cemetery transcription that you have not shown in your example, but which should be included. For example, the transcriber(s) names, the source of the information if its not an original transcription, the transcription date(s), the exact, cemetery location. All of these things, and more, need to be shown if the article is to have use for genealogists. If your purpose is not to provide information for genealogists, then you probably need to consider returning to your first option of creating a separate wiki. In that vein, another possibility that seems obvious is to place your information on the "Find A Grave" site. Its not a wiki, in the sense that you can't edit what others input, but you can certainly add the information in any form you want. Just a thought there, not a suggestion to go to Find A Grave. As far as moving this discussion elsewhere, the appropriate place to insert a comment about an article is on the discussion page of the article. It is not particularly appropriate for the watercooler. Another approach that's sometimes used is to intercalate comments directly into the article; usually their are shown in red. Both practices are common and standard fair on Wikipedia, and both practices are used on this Wiki. Most everything here is done in the open. Even if you do have strong feelings about the subject, I don't see any need to take the discussion private as long as the discussion is subject oriented. And if its not subject oriented, then there's probably no reason for discussion in any location. Bill 19:33, 23 March 2007 (UTC) :I haven't added the photographs to this article. Hopefully those will answer some of the questions on this particular cemetery. Zephyrinus 19:54, 23 March 2007 (UTC) private discussion About my comment about moving this discussion. I thought about moving this discussion to a MORE PUBLIC place, not a more private place. It just seemed that this talk page was rather obscure for anyone trying to find your form - for people who want to use your (dreadful :-) ) form. Smiling, Zephyrinus 19:54, 23 March 2007 (UTC) software error? Bill - About the anonymous user comment. I got this e-mail notice: ---- Dear Zephyrinus, the Genealogy page Genealogy:Watercooler has been changed on 16:29, 23 March 2007 by anonymous user 161.181.53.10, see http://genealogy.wikia.com/wiki/Genealogy:Watercooler for the current version. See http://genealogy.wikia.com/index.php?title=Genealogy:Watercooler&diff=0&oldid=27074 for all changes since your last visit. Editor's summary: /* A rose is a rose */ Contact the editor: mail: No e-mail address wiki: http://genealogy.wikia.com/wiki/User:161.181.53.10 There will be no other notifications in case of further changes unless you visit this page. You could also reset the notification flags for all your watched pages on your watchlist. Your friendly Genealogy notification system That message on the watercooler I thought made reference to the West Liberty Cemetery page. Is this an error in the 1.9 Media upgrade software that I should report? I'm rather new here, but it seems that half my "watch" pages don't let me know when things change and it also seems that I don't get "you've got mail" messages when my user talk page changes. You have more experience than I. I don't know if it's an error or if it's just me. Maybe I'm more senile than I thought. Respectfully, Zephyrinus 19:50, 23 March 2007 (UTC) Second Impression Bill - I must say that was much more impressed with the form when the graphic appeared showing the USGS map of the area. I didn't like the idea of someone printing the form and taking it into the field to use as a fill-in-the-blank form when copying information from tombstones; that's where the "terrible" comment was coming from. I approach cemeteries from a non-genealogical point of view. Your form may help organise the cemetery information in a more friendly manner for genealogical purposes; but in that case, I would include both my cemetery record and your form on the same page, rather than an either-or situation. Examples of this more genealogical-friendly presentation of data include listing the graves alphabetically rather than a random numeric system - this would be easier to hypertext (wikify) the graves to individual articles as well. I have a few questions about your form. You said, "The space provided in these tables expands to fill whatever is placed there." Yet, the "Transcription Date" seems to be an exception to this; rather than the table expanding, the description was placed on two separate lines. Would a "hard-space" (" " followed by a ";") force the table to expand? If information were put into the form, is there an automated mechanism by which this data can be sorted? Thanks for your information and assistance. Zephyrinus 23:26, 25 March 2007 (UTC)